Unemployed atheist internet blogger, John Prentice, is making what he and his atheist blogger colleagues deem a giant step for reason in an age of religious superstition.

What makes Prentice a special case is that he is a Jesus mythicist, one who doubts that the historical Jesus ever existed at all as a historical person. Mythicists have been traditionally viewed by scholars as a lunatic fringe hence the bravery Prentice demonstrated in his application for the job. With great confidence he recently applied to teach Historical Jesus Studies and New Testament Studies at Talbot School of Theology, a conservative evangelical Christian theological seminary in California.

Prentice boasts that his CV is “rock solid” and that it includes all his papers submitted to anti-religious organizations such as “JesusHatesYou,” “ReasonAboveGod,” and “Atheism.com.” There was no ways given such credibility and achievements that he would be denied the teaching position at the seminary, he says.

When asked where he learned his material, Prentice said he spent much time over the last few years gleaning his facts from atheist websites, “I find that more often than not the only logic and reason existing in many spheres of our society are on atheist platforms, and that is where the real facts are found,” says Prentice.

In response to a question of what he makes of the scholars, historians, and scientists who have contributed to intellectual progress but who are not atheists he dismissively swipes his had as if swatting a fly, “They’re probably atheists,” he retorts, “they just don’t know it yet.”

Judging by Prentice’s latest paper shared on his blog, he loves to cite the films Zeitgeist and Religulous at length in his papers. When asked why he saw these as reliable sources given that the allegations within them ran contrary to scholarship and the views of scholars, he enthusiastically remarked, “That is why this is a revolution! These sources are based in facts and reason even if scholars can’t see that. After all, are these scholars atheists? If not then that easily explains the motivation for their illogical, unreasonable disagreement.”

Prentice’s application also serves to reinforce conservative Christian views that contemporary academic scholarship is both dangerous and antithetical to the Christian religion, “This absolutely proves it! That there is a big conspiracy concocted by the mind of Satan in modern scholarship,” says pastor Almond of Hill Crest Church while swinging his Bible left and right in a frenzy, “These God hating, Jesus denying, evolution worshiping atheists like Prentice are all the evidence we need of this toxicity.”

Talbot School of Theology denied Prentice a teaching role at the university.

James Bishop

Hi. I am James. I live in South Africa where I am currently studying theology & philosophy, and majoring in psychology (graduate 2018). I graduated in marketing and brand communications majoring in multimedia design (2014). I also obtained TESOL in 2017. Welcome to my blog!